Trifle

It is interesting to watch the surface joviality on screen while racism is layered between courses like soggy trifles.

Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmation strong / As proofs of holy writ.

Olde Chaucer doth of Topas tell, / Mad Rablais of Pantagruell, / A latter third of Dowsabell, / With such poore trifles playing:

[W]hen they had the Character and Honour of a VVoman at their Mercy, often times made it their Jest, and at least look’d upon it as a Trifle, and counted the Ruin of thoſe, they had had their VVill of, as a thing of no value.

‘And all about a rattle!’ said Alice, still hoping to make them a little ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.

A trifle, some eight-penny matter.

He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums […]

What’s eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant sum.

“It was bad of me then not to send the fifteen hundred dollars. I assumed it would be a trifle.” / “Well, until a few months ago it was a trifle.”

This Line leaves out […] Poplar and Black-vvall, vvhich are indeed contiguous, a Trifle of Ground excepted, and very populous.

There was a good deal of rustling and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp smoke, and an occasional giggle from Amy […]

“Take just a trifle of French mustard […]”

You must not trifle with her affections.

[…] Do not believe / That, from the sense of all civility, / I thus would play and trifle with your reverence:

“Miss Bennet,” replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, “you ought to know, that I am not to be trifled with […]”

But a Judge may not trifle with the Law because the society is defective.

[…] playing and trifling are completely banished out of my mind […]

But he was terribly roused too and bound to go on; he wasn’t just trifling but intended something.

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass and cast his eyes up at the ceiling […]

She sat in a café, trifling with her coffee spoon.

We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence.

For an honest and sober man will rather make that woman his wife, whom he seeth employed continually about her business, than one who makes it her business to trifle away her own and others time.

As it was, he did nothing with much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without benefit from books or anything else.

You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away!

[…] but this sore night / Hath trifled former knowings.